The present invention relates to time stamp machines, that is, machines which stamp documents with time information such as date of receipt or filing or the like.
When stamping ordinary documents, such as incoming mail, it is usually sufficient to stamp only the time and date of receipt. In certain cases, however, it is desirable to maintain a count of the number of documents stamped. For example, a bank may wish to stamp checks or other fiduciary documents and may wish to know how many documents have been stamped. In such case, it is necessary to stamp a sequence number on the document as well as the usual time and date information. Essentially, each printing or stamping operation is counted. In the event a document is to be stamped in duplicate, however, it is necesssary to count every two stamping operations, so that the original document and its duplicate are each stamped with the same sequence number.